![Port Talbot, By Grubb at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/port_talbot.jpg?quality=83)
Tata Steel has announced an immediate withdrawal from Britain, threatening 4000 steel working jobs, and 40,000 jobs in dependent industries. The main reason given for abandoning Britain, is the high price Tata is forced to pay for energy, thanks to Britain’s green energy policies.
Tata’s decision is nevertheless a body blow to steel in the UK, with wide industrial and political implications. The threat to 4,000 jobs at the UK’s largest steelworks at Port Talbot, a community which is synonymous with the steel industry today in the way Jarrow was with the shipyards a century ago, is existential. But the closure of Tata’s plants, if it goes ahead, could threaten at least 40,000 jobs nationwide and help to make a mockery of the “active and sustained industrial strategy” which George Osborne advocated as recently as last November.
It would be foolish to pretend that there would be no problem facing steelmaking in Britain that determined state intervention could not solve. Global market power in steel production has shifted decisively to China, while decades of underinvestment and a long-term decline in UK steel’s international competitiveness cannot simply be dismissed as unimportant, least of all at a time when public money remains tight. Tata, after all, is a company with a record of trying to take the long view. It invested in a new blast furnace at Port Talbot. But steel’s cost base, especially the prices it had to pay for energy, left it vulnerable to the glut that has followed the slowdown of the Chinese economy. China’s readiness to unload steel on global markets at marginal cost knocked the floor out of the industry elsewhere, including in the UK.
The Tata decision is the latest stage of an ongoing crisis in the British steel industry.
Leading left wing British opposition politician Jeremy Corbyn, a strong advocate of renewables, has demanded that parliament be recalled, to consider state subsidies and other emergency measures to prevent job losses in the steel industry. Sadly the list of measures Corbyn wants considered, does not appear to include tackling the root cause of the job losses – Britain’s insane green energy prices.
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People are asking why the UK steel industry is suffering from Green Taxes, while the Swedish and German ones are doing ok.
The Swedish steel industry runs off hydro power. This is not attacked by the Greens.
The Germans IMPORT MORE THAN HALF their power – from hydro in the north and the French nuclear to the south. That means they can even run a photo-voltaic industry and get away with it.
The UK still depends on coal as the largest single power source. Green taxes aim to tax this out of existence. Which is why the UK is suffering alone…
German private consumers pay much more (twice as much as the UK) so that their Industry pays less.
Maybe they just need to install more under channel cables to get electricity from Europe.
“As of 2005 imports of electricity from France have historically accounted for about 5% of electricity available in the UK. Imports through the interconnector have generally been around the highest possible level, given the capacity of the link. In 2006, 97.5% of the energy transfers have been made from France to UK, supplying the equivalent of 3 million English homes.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel
“The UK is the world’s sixth largest importer of electricity” “This energy gap is due to the closure of coal-fired power stations that cannot meet emission standards and the shutdown of aging nuclear power stations.”
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2011/11/20/uk-electricity-import-and-export/
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/electricity-import-export.png
‘4000 steel working jobs, and 40,000 jobs in dependent industries.’
Not to worry. The government has programs to take care of them. Who needs jobs anymore?
Socialism is freedom.
Freedom from working
Freedom from eating
…
The people of the old USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had a saying:
“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”.
Heck, at least they pretended to work.
What planet are you on?
This crisis is brought about by a right wing Tory government stuffed with Old Etonians who dont give a sh** about manufacturing or workers.
The fact that a right wing Labour government (eg Tony Blair) would not be any different is no consolation .
Cameron and Osborne are too busy looking after City of London tax dodgers and British badged tax avoidance centres around the world to worry about British Heavy Industry.
Only in Europe would socialists be called right wing.
There are very few “right wingers” in the British govt, does varying shades of socialist.
Replace “does” with “just”.
The following sentence is hard to understand because it has multiple negatives.
Here’s a simpler version.
Further simplification:
I have a feeling that even cheaper energy would only postpone the inevitable.
Further simplifiction
They’re dead, but essential to the UK and must be saved at all costs. Let’s subsidise them to the tune of 100% like Green Energy.
Britain is bumping up against what economists call comparative advantage.
A desire to improve living standards means Britain must move displaced workers into higher value-add jobs. This has 3 major components: (1) political leadership, (2) appropriate education, and (3) personal flexibility.
All 3 components are essentially missing in modern Britain (and other western democracies). If the only British response is to chase down the rabbit-hole of Chinese slave labor and subsidies, that may have some limited validity, but it simply prolongs financial damage to displaced workers (and probably increases the national debt).
Isn’t this exactly what the politicians want? It will help them meet their emissions targets. Do people actually believe that lowering emission will not cause economic hardship?
I don’t think it is what they want. Most Western politicians I’ve met are scientifically illiterate – mostly legal background. They probably don’t understand what they are attempting to achieve is impossible.
There was a time when as a politician, even if you were as thick as a plank, you were obliged to take direction from specialists. Now of course you do as you’re told by the EU and ‘gold plate’ that a bit to show your ‘leadership’. For internal backup you whistle up your nearest green fairy and plough billions into research supportive of your windmill fantasies.
What they want is to reduce emissions, which this will accomplish. What they do not want is the economic hardship that comes with reducing emissions.
The battle is ever so slowly coming to a head. Up until now, the cost of Green policies has been minimal. That is going to change and this is indirect evidence of that change. (I mean indirect because energy policy is just one piece of this particular puzzle)
It’s O.K. though Eric, because although they did indeed mostly train in Law (and the Arts and Humanities) they later make some effort to keep abreast of developments in “science”.
By watching the BBC and reading the Guardian.
Perhaps even subscribing to the National Geographic.
So, their total ignorance is perfectly combined with self-education!!!
Yes, the situation could hardly be any worse.
“Leading left wing British opposition politician Jeremy Corbyn, a strong advocate of renewables, has demanded that parliament be recalled, to consider state subsidies and other emergency measures to prevent job losses in the steel industry.”
But shouldn’t Jeremy and Co be applauding the closure of coal burning steel plants with less crowding out of investment in his precious renewables of the future? Think of it as Schumpeter’s constructive destruction eh Jeremy?
Jeremy thinks it’s a good idea to maintain a nuclear submarine fleet – but without nukes. That boy needs to be in a care home under heavy sedation.
At least we now have a real chance of beating Sweden to the tape for first western country to achieve politically correct suicide. I’m off to Putin’s Russia.
Yep. These formerly dynamic countries – Sweden is Exhibit A – are held out as examples of successful welfare states, always with gestures to the wealth and efficiencies that existed before the state took control. Running on fumes and eating the seed corn, they are.
Please let us know how that works out.
Steel making in Britain was formerly in the State’s hands before being de-nationalised as part of a comprehensive programme to return most industry to private hands. The aim of this was largely to reduce the burden on the taxpayer, something that was once routine thanks to then inefficiencies of these huge organisations. Poor management and arcane trade union attitudes combining with a lack of strategic investment and modern methods being entirely ruinous. Interestingly enough much has changed as a result of this privatisation, British industry is often superbly run and very efficient, yet still finds itself unable to compete with foreign practices. In this instance global production that exceeds demand, a situation that sees China supporting production and sale of steel at or below cost, factors that are aided and abetted by Britain’s obsession with saving the world. My sympathy is with those who may well lose their livelihood when they may have escaped until better times even if it was difficult. Regrettably Britain’s political parties are dominated by people who have little idea of the world’s realities, they are all too frequently hopeless bodies whose real aims conflict with their primary responsibility, looking after those who elect them. I would like to find someone better to vote for, but unfortunately most political aspirants know little about industry or business never mind real life.
The global glut of product and factors of production is due to actions of state-created central banks and the states they enable pushing state-defined GDP using currency units summoned from thin air, in so doing having directly or indirectly built stuff nobody wanted or needed or can scarcely afford to operate and maintain. China’s empty cities are but one quite clear example, with Australia’s mining sector following. Even Lord Keynes would be appalled at what they wrought.
Yours is a brief but deep comment. Sadly, few seem to understand the nature of the issue. Government policy around the world basically has brought forward future demand, stimulating activity which would not have occurred for some time if at all. The resulting economic growth is therefore largely illusory. I hope Keynes would be appalled. Certainly Hayek would be.
reading the CAGW-infested Guardian’s faux concern for the steel workers makes me sick. the media & politicians most responsible for pushing CAGW policies that are destroying industry are the ones who shout the loudest when the INTENDED consequences come to pass.
“This is not a time for dogma” writes the Guardian in the final para! too late…the CAGW dogma the Guardian pushed/continues to push is responsible for the industrial mayhem with more to come (spare a thought for the state of the National Grid):
31 Mar: EnergyLiveNews: Jacqueline Echevarria: Steel sector crisis ‘due to high UK energy costs’
The comment from Conservative MP Peter Lilley follows Indian company Tata Steel’s decision to sell all its businesses in the UK, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “Clearly there’s a world problem to the steel industry, we need to be asking why it’s the British industry in particular which seems to be facing terminal closure.
“I think one of those reasons is still far too high energy costs in this country. We can’t blame all that on the EU, that’s largely a self-inflicted wound but we ought to be doing more.”
The MP for Hitchin and Harpenden believes the UK has taken an “even more extreme view than many other countries on the need to subsidise renewable energy and other expensive forms of energy, the costs of which in this country is spread across industry as well as consumers”…
http://www.energylivenews.com/2016/03/31/steel-sector-crisis-due-to-high-uk-energy-costs/
31 Mar: UK Daily Mail: Ross Clark: Eight reasons why Port Talbot never stood a chance (and the EU is the biggest of them all)
Root of many UK steel problems is the glut of steel imported from China
Climate Change Act is another reason for crisis in the British steel industry
There are six other reasons why the dice were loaded against Port Talbot
And America’s just as bad
So much for the special relationship. The U.S. Department of Commerce has also subjected British producers to import tariffs on steel — in our case of up to 30 per cent. This is not because we are dumping cheap steel on the U.S., but purely as a protectionist measure to help U.S. producers sell more at home…
The legacy of Red Ed
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was predictably jumping up and down yesterday, demanding that Parliament be recalled to discuss the crisis over Port Talbot. But the fact is that one of the major reasons for the crisis in the British steel industry is the Climate Change Act…
The reason is that punitive green taxes and levies have been introduced in an attempt to meet the self-imposed, arbitrary target for cutting UK carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 — a figure dreamed up by (Labour’s) Ed Miliband when he was Environment Minister under Gordon Brown…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3516543/Eight-reasons-Port-Talbot-never-stood-chance-EU-biggest-all.html
Following on that Peter Lilley interview on Five Live we were treated to a much longer, uninterrupted lecture from Ken Clark, Twentieth Century sometime Chancellor, who bemoaned the green energy taxes, whilst lauding the EU and all it’s works.
Well, he would wouldn’t he?
Yesterday’s man, praising yesterday’s anachronistic institution, whose power he promulgated at the expense of UK democracy and self determination.
Peter Lilley talks more sense on energy than anyone else in Parliament. He was one of only 3 MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act. Sadly this means that he will be ignored or vilified by many, particularly those in the Grauniad.
“Green
EnergyIdiots may have Just Cost Britain 40,000 Jobs”.There, fixed it for you.
Typical attitude of Progressive politicians and bureaucrats: “Our program failed, but it’s never our fault.”
They fail to recognize that government intervention is always gum in the clockworks.
Progressives always have an answer to problems of their own making:
“It would be foolish to pretend that there would be no problem facing steelmaking in Britain that determined state intervention could not solve. “
No matter how many problems government intervention causes, the solution is always, more government intervention.
No bother at all. Hire the 40,000 at the Department for Environment. Borrow the money to provide good pay and great benefits, so someone else will pay.
This exposure of elevated costs will play out over many more industries and jobs as the vortex of easy money , high debt, and overcapacity whip saws the world economy. Bad public policy has been busy not only with green power scams but also with easy monetary policy as substitute for tax and regulatory reforms. The continuing easy money path now after almost a decade of it is the delay tactic to hold a fragile world together.
The money changer city state could care less.
Canada is likely going to lose 1/2 of its steel jobs (currently 20,000 workers) with the closure of at least 1 of its last 3 producers (I’m expecting only Dofasco will survive intact). The blame is also being placed on China but given they are all based in Ontario which has the highest electricity prices in North America it is surprising (or not) that our “green” governments don’t want to place any blame on this. It doesn’t help that they produce 2x the steel Canada needs and their business depends on exports into a sated NA market with declining demand.
Does Evraz/Ipsco count as a steel producer?
I was thinking of the big mills (Dofasco, Stelco, and Algoma — the latter 2 are in some form of receivership/sale) but Evraz would make it 4 — although they are also laying off workers so I am not sure of their financial situation. But given they are in Saskatchewan they can’t blame energy prices.
Yes, their problem is that nobody is building pipelines. Sometimes ya just can’t win.
Yeah, and it will be at least 5 years before any new pipelines are built with PM Lite at the helm in Canada.
http://s9.postimg.org/6zeyqgx0v/Ind_Elec.png
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/international-industrial-energy-prices
Quarterly: Industrial electricity prices in the EU for small, medium, large and extra-large consumers
See source spreadsheet for Germany, conspicuous by its absence from charts.
” parliament be recalled, to consider state subsidies and other emergency measures ”
Typical socialist thinking. IE, there is no problem that unlimited amounts of OPM (Other People’s Money) can’t fix.
Perhaps shuttered industrial complexes are the most practical sites for the warmunist renewables investors to establish their supposedly sustainable wind and solar farms instead of displacing natural habitats.
What makes Britain’s climate and energy policy and legislation to reduce GHGs even more insane is that the natural millennial cycle peaked in 2003 and the earth has been in a cooling trend since then . See Figs 1 and 5 at the latest post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
Since when do “greens” (read socialist / communists ) give a rat’s ass about people?
The green’s heaven on earth; the former USSR, Castro’s Cuba and Maduro’s Venezuela have a PERFECT record of impoverishing the citizenry and enriching the ruling elites. This socioeconomic outcome is what the greens desire and pine for. It will allow them to exert total control over the “unwashed masses;” (read, ignorant and stupid masses).
And let’s be honest; CO2 is a TRACE GAS in the atmosphere constituting 0.04 PERCENT of the atmosphere; it has ZERO affect on climate.
Lastly, if you want to really destroy the lives of people, bring on an ice age or a “LIttle Ice Age.” Humans are and have always been creatures of warm climates.
And our sympathy level is what? Oh! The Arab contribution to “number theory”. That would be -5,-6,-4,-3,-2,-1,?,1,2,3,4,5,6 !!!
The concept of zero was developed in the east. All the Arabs did was transfer that information to the west.
Hey, employment is a real drag. Getting up in the morning. Reporting for work. Putting up with whacko bosses. Who needs it? Those folks will probably be happier and better adjusted without jobs.
Seriously, in a world with low transportation costs and very few trade barriers, it is very hard to keep industrial jobs in developed countries. It’s usually cheaper to make most stuff in low wage countries with low living costs. Eventually of course it’ll all even out. Americans and Europeans and Chinese and Indians and eventually even Somalis and Afghans will all most likely compete on a more or less equal basis. But that’s a long time in the future.
More immediately, England’s energy policies may well be misguided (I wouldn’t vote for them If anyone allowed me to vote on them). But electricity costs really aren’t that big a deal for steel. Now Aluminium as you folks prefer to spell it … That’s a different story. Anyway, there’s a fairly exhaustive analysis of the effect of English electric prices on steel production here. http://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-the-steel-crisis-and-uk-electricity-prices Bottom line: High electricity costs do a bit of harm, but they really only raise the product price by a couple of percent. The big problem is too much supply and too little demand resulting in no profits for anyone anywhere.
The Outer Planets Association will undercut the production and shipping costs vis-à-vis Earth. … in about 200 years.
Just stick a windmill on top of the site and give it more subsidy.
The silly thing is it will mean more stuff imported from the other side of the earth
Here in Ontario, Canada we have manufacturers that have to overpay for “green” power, then have the excess power (which all comes from nukes, hyrdo and gas anyway) to neighbouring states and provinces…which have manufacturers who are in competition with their products.
Reminds me of Communist China where the family is billed for the bullet that kills the prisoner.